83. Yay! You actually bothered doing some research!

So what we're saying is that it was bad then, but it is good now

No. Not even close.

The filibuster is a tool to use in extreme circumstances. That used to be enforced by tradition, but the Republicans have abandoned tradition. So the rules need to be written so that it takes a lot of effort. That way it will only be used in extreme circumstances.

Reid's changes don't do that. The filibuster continues to be trivial to use. Today's Republicans will not allow the Democrats a trivial-to-use veto over their agenda.

We're talking about people proudly proclaiming their gerrymandering success and their plans to cheat in the electoral college. They are not yesterday's Republican party.

Now Reid wants to pretty much do the same thing so the obstructionist minority party cannot stop the progress of legislation or nominees which it deems to be extreme, and what we have here on DU are people upset that he's not going far enough.

Utterly false. Even Udall/Markley would still let the minority filibuster. The changes would require the minority to actually put forth effort to do so.

Under Reid's compromise, it's actually harder for the minority to vote on a bill than filibuster a bill - only one of them has to show up for the filibuster.

Regarding my point about the number of cloture votes, it is quite easy to verify that there have been more of them under Reid than under every former Senate majority leader.

And once you begin to understand how the Senate works, you might start figuring out how those votes aren't Reid's fault. See, the way the Senate used to work, the minority would just let bills come up for a vote via unanimous consent. So they didn't have to do cloture votes. McConnell and company refuse to give unanimous consent, so the next step in the normal way of doing things is a cloture vote.